1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a lens barrier device and an image pickup apparatus thereof, in particular to the lens barrier device and the image pickup apparatus using a slide groove to achieve the effect of driving and linking a plurality of vanes to open or close.
2. Description of the Related Art
As the optical technology advances and the related market has been promoted aggressively by major camera manufacturers in recent years, people record details of their daily life by using digital still cameras instead of the conventional recording method of writing dairy in the past. For the huge demand of this consumer market, it is an important subject for the major camera manufacturers to find a way of lowering the production cost and simplifying the production process of the camera.
In prior art, most lens barrier comprise a spring which drives vanes elastically to open or close the vanes. However, the spring may become elastically fatigued after a long time of use, and the assembling process for the barrier with spring not only requires more time and labor, but also incurs a higher production cost. In addition, for extendable and contractible part, the lens is generally designed as an independent mechanism, so that the vanes of the lens cannot be correspondingly opened or closed while a lens barrel is extended or contracted, and needs an additional driving module for driving the lens to be extended or contracted. Obviously, the conventional method has the drawbacks of involving a complicated assembling procedure of the camera and increasing the production cost.
In view of the drawbacks of the conventional method, manufacturers try to design and develop an ideal lens barrier device that can be integrated with the operations of opening or closing the lens barrier as well as extending or contracting the lens, so as to overcome the high production cost and the waste of manufacturing time caused by the complicated lens barrier structure and independent lens extending and contracting structure of a conventional camera. The inventor of the present invention designed a zooming lens mechanism and an image pickup device to overcome the drawbacks of the prior art and to improve the industrial applications.